Biles, Team USA mix grit and glamour to surge to the lead at Olympic gymnastics qualifying

PARIS (AP) — Simone Biles and the rest of the U.S. women’s gymnastics team walked onto the floor at Bercy Arena on Sunday in leotards adorned with thousands of crystals, the kind designed to attract as much attention as possible.

Don’t mistake all that glamour — both on the floor and in the stands, where Tom Cruise and Ariana Grande were among those who took in the spectacle — for a lack of grit.

The oldest team the Americans have ever brought to the Games has endured plenty through the years, from health scares to losses in their personal life . Those experiences have prepared them for whatever may come, perhaps Biles most of all .

So when the most decorated gymnast of all time felt a tweak during her floor exercise warm-up on Sunday, she didn’t panic. Neither did her teammates.

Biles briefly retreated to the back so coach Laurent Landi could essentially mummify the bottom of her left leg, then came back out and helped fuel a team that looks every bit as good as advertised.

With Biles — achy calf and all — putting up the highest score on vault and floor exercise and reigning Olympic champion Sunisa Lee looking perhaps as good as ever on uneven bars, the U.S. posted a total of 172.296, doing little to dampen the expectation that Tuesday night’s team final will be more of a coronation for a team that has called this trip to the Games part of their “Redemption Era.”

“They’re happy and relieved,” U.S. coach Cecile Landi said. “Day one, now moving on to team finals, all-around finals, a couple event finals hopefully.”

The score made it look like business as usual. It wasn’t for Biles, who Landi said tweaked a calf issue that initially cropped up a couple of weeks ago. Biles thought she had it under control until she warmed up on floor exercise.

After a few anxious moments, there Biles was, putting together another floor routine packed with the kind of difficulty no other gymnast in the world can approach.

It was the same on vault, where she slightly overcooked her signature Yurchenko double pike, proof the calf was good enough for her to generate the kind of speed necessary to perform perhaps the single most breathtaking skill being done in the sport.

“What she was able to do, with looking like she had some soreness or something in her lower leg, is remarkable,” said Chellsie Memmel, the co-lead of the U.S. women’s program.

Yet it wasn’t just Biles — who is expected to be available for the rest of the meet and felt good enough later Sunday to post a video of her lip-syncing a rap song to her social media channels — who helped the U.S. find itself more than five points ahead of Italy and China through three of the five subdivisions.

Lee, who has spent a good portion of the last 18 months battling multiple kidney issues that saw her weight balloon and limited her training, looked as sharp as she did in Tokyo three years ago on bars — her signature event — to finish second behind Biles in the all-around.

Chiles, a silver medalist in 2021, erased the memory of a sometimes difficult performance in Japan by finishing third behind her teammates among early qualifiers. The 23-year-old will miss the all-around final due to rules that limit countries to two athletes per competition, though she is likely headed to the floor exercise final and badly wants the team gold that Russia claimed in Tokyo.

Jade Carey, the 2020 Olympic floor exercise champion, likely locked up a spot in the vault finals while battling an illness that perhaps contributed to multiple mistakes on floor that cost her a chance to defend her gold medal.

Hezly Rivera, at 16 the youngest member of Team USA by a considerable margin, had some visible nerves while on beam and uneven bars in her first trip to the Games.

Teams compete four athletes on each event during qualifying, with each team dropping its lowest score. That will change during the three-up, three-count final.

With the Russians out due to the war in Ukraine, the stiffest competition figures to come from Brazil, which is scheduled to compete later Sunday. The Brazilians are led by 2022 world champion Rebeca Andrade, arguably the best gymnast in the world not named Biles over the last three years.

Italy and China were solid, particularly China’s Qui Qiyuan. The 17-year-old put up a dazzling 15.066 on uneven bars that likely makes her the closest challenger to Algeria’s Kaylia Nemour, whose 15.600 was the highest of the day on any event outside of Biles’ 15.8 on vault.

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